Constructing PCs is fairly straightforward, nevertheless it’s not with out its challenges. Many fanatics will inform you that probably the most tedious a part of placing a PC collectively is among the final: hooking up the facility provide cables. By necessity, energy connectors are sort of massive and unwieldy, they usually cannot solely be a ache to route, but in addition sometimes tough to truly get fully-seated. That is vital, lest you find yourself with a smoking cable.
The thought is that, as a substitute of plugging a bunch of cumbersome wire bundles into your graphics card, completely trashing the aesthetics of your construct, you as a substitute slot a second connector on the cardboard right into a small slot towards the entrance of the board that then provides the facility. This connector idea known as “GC-HPWR”, and ASUS already has working prototype graphics playing cards and motherboards utilizing it.
HPCE stands for “Excessive Energy Card Edge”, and it is a design that has seen lengthy use in servers and supercomputers for delivering plenty of energy by, you guessed it, a card edge connector. Some websites have reported this time period because the title of the connector, however that is incorrect; that is simply the kind of the connector.
Be aware that you simply nonetheless have to attach a 12VHPWR connector to the motherboard. Certainly, whereas this connector removes the necessity for working cumbersome wire bundles to the skin fringe of your graphics card, it would not utterly take away the necessity for such cables. In any case, the GPU has to get its energy from someplace. On the unique idea that the corporate confirmed again in Might, that motherboard had the entire additional energy connectors on the again of the board—handy, for making a clear construct, however actually not nice in your common laptop case.
ASUS will apparently be promoting a small provide of graphics playing cards and motherboards sporting this configuration, seemingly as a pair, however we have not seen any point out of pricing or launch dates for these. Likewise, we additionally have not seen another distributors speaking about comparable configurations. What do you consider the GC-HPWR connector? Is it one thing you’d use, or would you fairly keep on with ol’ dependable 8-pin energy connectors? Tell us within the feedback.
